(Message given at Wayside Friends Church on July 7, 2024)
I choose to let the bible be authoritative in my life.
That phrase may be triggering for some, but I’ve been thinking about what I mean when I say that phrase, versus how American Churchianity tends to define “biblical authority.”
We’ve gone over the top in American Churchianity in focusing on the what instead of the who and the how.
There is way too much focus on our beliefs, on the codes and decrees and laws.
Just look at Louisiana legislating to put the Ten Commandments in every classroom. I’d dare to say that many people in America, many who wouldn’t identify as Christians at all, know what our beliefs and codes are.
The “what” is known inside and outside of the church.
But when I look at the church, when I look at myself, the issue isn’t so much what is right, what should I do, what do I believe. I very often know the answers to those questions.
The issue often is: how do I live it out? How do I persevere and act according to my beliefs?
How do I do right, when there are so many easier ways to act? How do I do right, when doing wrong–or even just staying silent–can bring more beneficial and sometimes even lucrative results?
To answer that question, I want to look to the bible to be authoritative. And that’s where I find not one answer, but many answers. There’s not just one thing, but a plurality in harmony and sometimes tension. The what is there, to be sure: and also the how and the who and the why.
The Psalms–specifically Psalm 119–give what we often think of in American Churchianity. These verses center squarely on the what.
How can a young person stay pure?
By obeying your word.
I have tried hard to find you—
don’t let me wander from your commands.
I have hidden your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.
I praise you, O LORD;
teach me your decrees.
I have recited aloud
all the regulations you have given us.
I have rejoiced in your laws
as much as in riches.
I will study your commandments
and reflect on your ways.
I will delight in your decrees
and not forget your word.
Psalm 119:9-16, TNIV
If this is all there is, then the bible is just commands. The bible is decrees. We stay pure by knowing the what, by knowing the laws, by believing correctly and remembering all these statutes and decrees.
But life seems to disprove this. I see a world where many of us know the right thing to do, where we hold values that are giving and selfless and moral–but the “knowing” doesn’t guarantee that we act according to these values.
The biblical word “remember” shows us there is so much more richness to all of this.
Remember is a wonderful word to trace through the bible.
Remember does include rehearsing and remembering the what; and it is also remembering the who, and the how. I’m going to give a quick sample of examples of each; you can find many more on your own. First, remembering the what:
So commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these words of mine. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that as long as the sky remains above the earth, you and your children may flourish in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors.
Deuteronomy 11:18-21, TNIV
When I listen to the Pray-as-you-Go podcast on my morning commute, I listen to scripture every day. It reminds me of the what, reminds me what I know; it keeps the values of God on the doorposts of my mind, so to speak.
Then there is remembering who, the who behind the what:
Remember how the LORD your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years.
Deuteronomy 8:1-2, TNIV
There are so many of these remember who reminders: remember God, always faithful. Remember God–rescuer, and the one who intervenes on our behalf.
This isn’t remembering beliefs or laws or decrees. It’s remembering God; and not God as a legislator making laws, or a judge enforcing punishment: remembering God as rescuer, as one who brings a faithful covenant relationship to us.
Remember who God is…and, remember who we were, whowe are.
Remember: you were slaves in Egypt. Remember: you were fickle, making that golden calf. Remember: your ancestors were the ones who complained at Meribah and so many places in the wilderness.
And also, remember the how.
Remember that God guided, by cloud and fire. Remember that God provided, through manna and quail and water from a rock. Remember how God acted on your behalf. Remember the story, the history, the actions in space and time, the how that shows the faithful who which God is.
This is a relationship, a dance, a covenant, a reality that goes far beyond obeying the what of God’s decrees.
In many of the Psalms, there is even this radical kind of remembering that turns the one-way street of obeying laws on its head.
We, the psalmists demonstrate, can ask God to remember. We read it all through the Psalms. God, remember your compassion and unfailing love. Remember that you chose us. Remember your covenant promises.
You, God, have to remember too. It’s a two-way street.
Doing this dive into remembering in the bible has reminded me that there is a diverse fullness, a far richer resource for strength to do what I know to be right than American Churchianity wants to tell us.
Knowing the what is valuable and important. Knowing how Jesus—God’s clearest revelation—knowing how Jesus lived and taught and acted and believed is very important to guide and shape what we ourselves ought to value and believe and try to live out.
Remember who. Remember what God has done, God who created all things, God who hears the oppressed and broken hearted, God who intervenes and rescues, God who walks with us through “the valley of the shadow of death” so I will fear no evil.” (Psalm 23:4)
And remember how. Remember the stories. Remember the actions in history when God broke in. The biblical stories, yes, and also OUR stories, OUR experiences of the living God.
There is even another thread in the bible–we can draw strength to persevere by remembering how doing right brings satisfaction and develops our character.
It feels really good and helps us sleep at night when we know we’ve stuck it out and lived out what we value. Remembering and rehearsing can help us get to that place of knowing we did right.
Seven years ago, after going through the pain and anger of the church split, I remembered that one of my strong values was to see the humanity in all people, including ones I strongly disagree with. So I rehearsed what I would do if I saw anyone from church at Fred Meyer, for instance. I determined that I would look them in the eye, smile, and greet them by name. The remembering and the rehearsing helped me actually do it, and it was good to celebrate when I had lived out my values.
The bible and experience also tell me that perseverance and endurance in doing right develops my character. One biblical example:
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.
Romans 5:3-4, TNIV
Selfishly, remembering that doing right in hard circumstances can actually shape my character in positive ways can give strength to endure and live my values.
All of that helped, but I’ll be honest: I still wanted more.
Is there something that isn’t just my brain, something beyond thoughts and cerebral stuff? That seems to be how we over-simplify things in the Western world. Isn’t there something to be said for rooting things more in our bodies, more in our community?
And that nudged me to look at the biblical story of Daniel.
The book of Daniel begins when God’s chosen country is defeated and humiliated by another king, another nation. It doesn’t match the “remembering” they practiced. It doesn’t match the story of how God gave this group of people the land of Israel forever. This isn’t right! It doesn’t match! Everything I have known is ending.
Then, the conquering king sends someone to choose the best and the brightest in Jerusalem, to enslave them and use them. Daniel and his three friends are ripped from their homes and placed into this huge game of Survivor where they have tasks and competitions to see who is gonna cut it, to see who will win and thrive and move into positions of service in the new kingdom.
Everything about who they were, everything about their own culture and religion, the Babylonian king tried to erase. Their names were changed, their clothes were changed, their language and literature and education were changed.
The promise? Make it through the Survivor game of enculturation, leave behind who you were, and you’ll be able to serve and have a good life.
Then comes the moral choice.
Names are one thing, language and literature are one thing: but for faithful Jews, what you ate was an essential part of how to live out faith. It wasn’t just laws and decrees and beliefs, things that could be held regardless of what clothes you wore or where you lived or what language you spoke. It was also practices, ways of living.
And eating kosher was a big one.
So Daniel and his friends know what’s right: eat kosher. But how important is that when my life is at stake?
Daniel was determined not to defile himself by eating the food and wine given to them by the king.
Daniel 1:8, TNIV
Well, how does Daniel live out that determination?
Daniel famously sets it up as a challenge. Let us eat our way, let the rest eat the King’s diet, and we’ll see who is stronger and better at the end of the trial. But the steward is “afraid of my lord the king who has ordered you to eat this food and wine.” (This “living by the law” thing seems to span a lot of cultures.)
Daniel’s experimental challenge worked so well, everyone got put on Daniel’s kosher diet.
I grew up being taught the lesson of this story was to be obedient. Follow God’s rules. Which, ok, sure. That’s probably part of it. But isn’t part of the lesson also that doing the thing and living the practices actually helps sustain you?
Actually eating and drinking, actually living the practices of faith, helps their bodies to thrive, and helps their wills stay strong to do what is right.
For today, I’ll skip over a lot of good stuff: miracles and dreams revealed by God, kings having a severe mental break with reality, it’s high drama.
But when Daniel is an old man, having served at least two Babylonian kings and now King Darius of the Persian empire, we find him yet again rising to great positions of influence because of his integrity and faithfulness.
He’s about to be made the righthand man of King Darius when his peers at the top get jealous. They look to bring Daniel down, but they can’t find any dirt on him because of his integrity. He does his job too well. He practices what he preaches, he lives out his values.
So these jealous rivals come after him in the only way they can figure out: attacking the practice of his faith.
They get King Darius to make a decree that no one in the kingdom can pray to anyone else but Darius for 30 days.
There’s not even a hint of a dilemma for Daniel at this point. He knows what’s right, and he’s had so much engrained practice in doing the practices of faith that he just follows right through doing what he’s always done:
But when Daniel learned that the law had been signed, he went home and knelt down as usual in his upstairs room, with its windows open toward Jerusalem. He prayed three times a day, just as he had always done, giving thanks to his God.
Daniel 6:10, TNIV
Darius the king is distraught. He can’t get out of it. Apparently he’s not above the law. The law is a binding thing (again, the reminder that only focusing on laws and decrees locks us up.)
So Daniel is sentenced to be killed in the lion’s den.
And it’s then that the miracle happens, the shutting of the mouths of lions.
I mean, the miracle could have come a lot sooner, right? Before the law was even made, God could have intervened. Before other leaders were jealous. Why not way back? Why not a miracle to get Daniel passed over so that he could have stayed in Jerusalem? Why not a miracle to save Jerusalem from the conquering king to begin with?
I don’t know. I don’t know why God doesn’t intervene more often, why there isn’t greater divine action against injustice. I don’t know.
But I do like thinking hard about how things do happen.
How Daniel’s regular practices of prayer were so engrained, that he so knew why those practices were there, that going against the decree wasn’t even a question for him.
I love the realization that the doing of the practices themselves, year after year, actually sustained Daniel in the crunch time of living it out when it was hard.
I don’t pretend to understand why God intervened for Daniel in this moment and not in other moments, or why for Daniel and not for other people. But I do see that a long life of Daniel faithfully practicing (not just believing) his faith led to several instances of God breaking in, God showing up in this world.
So remembering what. Remembering who and how. Living the practices of our faith, getting it in our bodies.
And, remembering we are not alone, remembering our community.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith…
Hebrews 12:1-2a, TNIV
Fix our eyes on Jesus. I firmly believe and have myself experienced that this isn’t limited to just remembering the example of Jesus.
Hebrews points to the truth found in many places in the Bible (and spoken of by many faithful followers of Jesus over thousands of years) that there is the reality of the presence of God imparting strength to us.
…those who trust in the LORD will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint.
Isaiah 40:31, TNIV
So let’s try to live our values, not just name and remember them.
May you remember; the what, yes, but also the who and the how. May you practice faith in your body in a way that gives you strength. May you experience the encouragement of a surrounding community on the journey with you. And may you find, in some tangible and real way, the sustaining power of God’s very Self in your mind, heart, body, and soul.